An account that deftly captures key elements of recent Afghan history.
A fictionalized biography focuses on a woman who shaped Afghanistan’s place in the 20th century.
In this debut novel, Azam tells the life story of his friend Soraya Ludin in the voice of an unnamed narrator—a colleague of the title character—who makes occasional appearances in the tale. Soraya Suri, the narrative’s protagonist, is born in 1945 in Kabul to an educated family. Her childhood is divided between stints in Afghanistan, the United States, and Europe, while her father serves in a variety of diplomatic posts as the balance of power shifts in Kabul. Soraya herself is well-educated and is awarded a number of United Nations and Afghan government positions before the internal battles of the nation’s dysfunctional monarchy lead her to flee the country with her husband and children in 1981. She settles in Vienna, where she remains active in the expatriate community, working toward a sustainable Afghan government that protects the rights of women and minorities as the Soviet Union, religious extremists, and America invade the country in turns. Although things look bleak for Afghanistan after 2001, Soraya retains a hopeful attitude, and the book’s overall tone is one of cleareyed optimism. Soraya is a captivating protagonist, offering a dynamic perspective on international relations and governance, although the narrator’s unswerving devotion to her means the novel’s tone often approaches hagiography. The writing is often nonstandard English (“Soraya did not apprehend her lingo and was scanning in her mind every word pronounced and gesture accomplished”; “Soraya was interrogative why her society was so disgraceful of her ambitions”), though on the whole, it is comprehensible. Azam’s tendency to share the minutiae of every coup and palace conflict drags out the volume’s pacing at some points, but also ensures that readers with no knowledge of Afghan history will have no problem keeping track of the players and understanding how Soraya’s personal story fits into the broader narrative. (An extensive, helpful glossary also identifies the major figures and defines specialized terms.) Although its length is excessive (over 500 pages), the work provides an intriguing and thought-provoking depiction of a minor but important public figure.
An account that deftly captures key elements of recent Afghan history.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-984563-47-7
Page Count: 538
Publisher: XlibrisUS
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
In Clavell's last whopper, Tai-pan, the hero became tai-pan (supreme ruler) of Hong Kong following England's victory in the first Opium War. Clavell's new hero, John Blackthorne, a giant Englishman, arrives in 17th century Japan in search of riches and becomes the right arm of the warlord Toranaga who is even more powerful than the Emperor. Superhumanly self-confident (and so sexually overendowed that the ladies who bathe him can die content at having seen the world's most sublime member), Blackthorne attempts to break Portugal's hold on Japan and encourage trade with Elizabeth I's merchants. He is a barbarian not only to the Japanese but also to Portuguese Catholics, who want him dispatched to a non-papist hell. The novel begins on a note of maelstrom-and-tempest ("'Piss on you, storm!' Blackthorne raged. 'Get your dung-eating hands off my ship!'") and teems for about 900 pages of relentless lopped heads, severed torsos, assassins, intrigue, war, tragic love, over-refined sex, excrement, torture, high honor, ritual suicide, hot baths and breathless haikus. As in Tai-pan, the carefully researched material on feudal Oriental money matters seems to he Clavell's real interest, along with the megalomania of personal and political power. After Blackthorne has saved Toranaga's life three times, he is elevated to samurai status, given a fief and made a chief defender of the empire. Meanwhile, his highborn Japanese love (a Catholic convert and adulteress) teaches him "inner harmony" as he grows ever more Eastern. With Toranaga as shogun (military dictator), the book ends with the open possibility of a forthcoming sequel. Engrossing, predictable and surely sellable.
Pub Date: June 23, 1975
ISBN: 0385343248
Page Count: 998
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1975
BOOK TO SCREEN
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